The second season of Hulu’s teen drama Love, Victor is filled with sex-fueled scenes of underage boys visiting gay strip clubs and engaging in sexual acts. In one scene, for instance, the title character, Victor (Michael Cimino), a high school junior, brings the newly outed Rahim (Anthony Keyvan) into a gay bar to dance with strippers.
Rahim is a Muslim, and the show seems to portray his Muslim parents as being happy and supportive that their son is now out and proud as a gay teen. However, the Catholic family in the season is portrayed as far less accepting. In fact, they are portrayed as bigots.
Victor disregards his parents’ house rules and religious ideals, especially in the way he breaks the news that he is gay to his elementary school-aged brother, Adrian (Mateo Fernandez). During one of the episodes, Victor ignores his parents’ house rule of no sex in his bedroom by inviting his boyfriend over.
Victor’s mother, Isabel (Ana Ortiz), catches him having sex in his room with Benji (George Sear), and the three begin arguing about the incident. At one point, Benji — a visitor to the home — militantly responds to Isabel’s discomfort with their gay sexual encounter and blurts out that he and Victor are gay just as Victor’s little brother walks in the room.
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The episode portrays the militant Benji as being a hero for breaking the rules set by his boyfriend’s parents, not to mention telling the younger boy that his brother is gay despite the parents’ wish to break the news as a family.
The family’s Catholicism is also portrayed as narrow-minded bigotry in the second season in a plot that culminates with Isabel proudly proclaiming that her son is gay and angrily attacking the church and her local Priest over homosexuality.
Indeed, during her argument with the priest, Isabel seems to totally reject her faith by exclaiming that the church has taught her “ugly things.”
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“I have been raised to believe a lot of ugly things, Father. Things that it’s probably gonna take me the rest of my life to unlearn. But I will unlearn them,” she fiercely tells the parish priest.
Later, Isabel proudly tells her son that she “told off a priest today” in support of her son coming out.
As the season ends, Isabel has evolved from a mother uncomfortable with her teenage son having sex with other boys in his bedroom against her house rules, to angrily attacking her religion.
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